Multicast Domain Name System (also referred to as multicast DNS or mDNS) and DNS-Based Service Discovery (also referred to as DNS-SD) can be used by computing systems to provide service discovery such as zero-configuration networking (also referred to as zeroconf). For example, physical and virtual computing systems hosting mDNS and DNS-SD modules can query and advertise services (i.e., functionalities, data, or combinations thereof) provided by those computing systems to other computing systems in a distributed manner without prior coordination. Such service discovery methodologies can simplify discovery of services such as printing services; file storing or sharing services; remote desktop services; application services; multimedia services such as audio streaming services or video streaming services; textual, audio, and/or video communications services within a network.
Typically, computing systems that support mDNS and DNS-SD issue multicast service queries and observe multicast service advertisements (also referred to as service responses) to determine which services are available within a network. Because such service queries and service advertisements are communicated using multicast communications (i.e., multicast communications or communications that emulate multicast communications), multiple computing systems (or services hosted at those computing systems) can respond to a single service query and multiple computing systems can receive a single service advertisement. Thus, information about services available within a network of computing systems can propagate quickly through the network.